The meeting was called to order by the Chair Thomas Breslin with the following Senators and visitors present:
College of Architecture &
The Arts
College of Business
Administration
Library
Andy Grof
Jaime Canaves
David Dolata
Daniel Guernsey
Marcia Littley
College of Arts & Sciences
Dawn Addy
Gerardo Aladro
Thomas Breslin
Werner Boeglin
Chongsheng Cao
Julian Edward
Paula Gillespie
Alan Gummerson
Steve Heine
Krish Jayachandran
Kenneth Johnson
Oren Maxwell
Aurora Morcillo
Rene Price
Jean Rahier
Joerg Reinhold
Gene Rosenberg
Dev Roy
Misak Sargsian
Victor Uribe
Enrique Villamor
Hassan Zahedi
Absent:
John Berry
Piero Gardinali
Neptune Srimal
Krishnan Dandapani
Delano Gray
Shahid Hamid
Debra Vandermeer
Clark Wheatley
Absent:
Karlene Cousins
College of Education
Leonard Bliss
Marc Weinstein
Thomas Reio
College of Engineering
Peter Clarke
Jainendra Navlakha
Osama Mohammed
Nagarajan Prabakar
Ibrahim Tansel
Absent:
Sabri Tosunoglu
School of Hospitality
Pablo Simon
David Talty
School of Journalism
Absent:
Neil Reisner
Carlos Suris
College of Law
David Walter
Absent:
Tawia Ansah
Absent:
Lauren Christos
College of Medicine
Dietrich Lorke
Juan Lozano
David Boilard -Alternate
Absent:
Frederick Schild
College of Nursing &
Health Sciences
Dorothy Brooten
Jennifer Doherty-Restrepo
Amy Paul-Ward
College of Public Health &
Social Work
Mariana Baum
Fatma (Rose) Huffman
Paul Stuart
Ray Thomlison
Guest:
Irma Becerra-Fernandez
Juan Bueno
Robert Grillo
Steve Fain
Ken Jessell
Tonja Moore
Brian Peterson
Nicol Rae
Douglas Robertson
Damaris Rubio
James Sutton
Douglas Wartzok
Kathleen Wilson

Faculty Senate Meeting
Was called to order by Senate Chair Thomas Breslin
At MMC, 1:00PM, January 17, 2012
I.
Approval of the Agenda – Moved & Approved
II.
Approval of the Minutes of the November 15, 2011 meeting – Moved & Approved
III.
Chairperson’s Report – Chair Breslin provided the following report:
A few reminders are in order as we begin today: Nominations are due February 10 for faculty awards. The process is now on-line. The nominations committee is gathering nominations for the Senate’s elected offices. Nominations will be announced on March 6 and written statements of interest are due that day. Nominations from the floor will be entertained on March 27; candidates’ statements will be distributed on April 12 and we will hold elections at our April 17 meeting. Krish Dandapani is chair of the Nominating Committee.
Textbook order deadlines this year for both summer and fall are March 23. Ninety-eight percent of book orders for the Spring 2012 semester met the deadline. To boost textbook order compliance with the Textbook Affordability Act, the Textbook Affordability Committee supports assigning common texts for courses taught by adjuncts and visiting faculty members.
Departments could form textbook committees to determine appropriate textbook choices
The Academic Policies and Personnel Committee will meet on January 19 and discuss this matter as well as to hear a report on academic unit constitutions. Next Tuesday the Steering Committee takes up a report from its subcommittee on the Faculty Assessment of Administrators Survey.
Today we continue our attention to the core curriculum and we will be asked to conserve a motion from the University Core Curriculum Oversight Committee.
Today we will hear from the Provost. Among other things, he will speak to us about last
Thursday’s arrest on campus of several people associated with the Occupy FIU group. We will also hear from Robert Grillo, Vice President of the Division of Information Technology. Also very important to our common work is the Writing Initiative. Vice Provost Irma Becerra Fernandez and Prof. James Sutton will update us on that. Because our ends are dependent on the means available, the University has launched a capital campaign and I am pleased that Dr. Steve Fain, twice chair of the Senate, will address us today on how we might participate in the Campaign.
We will also hear a UFF report from Senator Wilson and we expect that Patrick O’Keefe, SGA president on this campus, will address us as well.
IV.
Action Items: a.
University Core Curriculum Oversight Committee Motion- Kenneth Johnson, Member
Motion#11/12:24: The Faculty Senate approves LAA 3712 (Image of the Garden:
Nature and Culture) to fulfill the Humanities section of the core curriculum.
Moved and Approved
V.
Reports: a.
Provost’s Report – Provost Wartzok
 If one had only the Miami Herald report to go on, the Provost would be as disturbed by the arrests as most of you are. As he reported to you at the last meeting when concerns were raised regarding the police response at UC Davis, our public safety

officers receive continually reinforced training on nonviolent means of arrest which are employed only when all other options have been exhausted. As a university FIU is deeply committed to free speech. We have identified a variety of free speech areas for faculty, students, staff and community. We also have an obligation to students so they can receive the education they enrolled in FIU to obtain. The DM pit, adjacent to many classrooms, is not one of the free speech areas.
 BOT rules are very clear: If a group wants to use amplified sound or if the number of participants is over 30, then prior approval is required. o Occupy has been protesting for months. They have followed the rules in the past and demonstrated in defined free speech areas. In the recent activity ending in arrest, the group assembled in the DM Pit. The group was asked to leave the Pit area seven different times over a three hour period. They were asked to relocate to the free speech area on the GC lawn. The first four notifications given to the group were informational. On the next three notifications that they needed to leave the DM pit area, the officer unplugged amplification system. The demonstrators persisted in plugging in the amplification system and refusing to move to one of the free speech areas. o The arrests were made because of the continued insistence on the use of amplification equipment. The arrests were completely non-violent. The university filed the minimum charges of “disrupting school activity.” The Provost was not present at the arrests. The newspaper reported that the Ombudsman had told the students that they did not need a permit to be in the DM pit but the
Ombudsman had not spoken to the students recently and when he did speak with them last month, he explained the BOT rules with respect to such demonstrations. The President will be making a formal statement soon. o Question: Why isn’t the entire campus a free speech zone? Provost response:
284 students were attending classes in adjacent areas at the time and it is our duty to protect their right to education. o Question: Who made the decision to arrest? Provost response: The police at the scene after it was clear there was no other way to prevent classes being disturbed. Only 2 of the 7 arrested were FIU students.

We recently completed responding to the Governor’s 17 questions regarding higher education operations and are now drafting a response to another set of questions posed by the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He has a desire to create the 12 th university in the SUS, a Polytechnic University, from the USF branch in
Lakeland, Florida.

We are also preparing information for the President’s testimony to the House
Education Committee. In conjunction with all the presidents testifying, the Southern
Regional Education Board and the Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis and
Government Accountability (OPPAGA) have prepared a number of SUS comparisons. o The SUS has the highest rate of transfer students in the Southern Educational region. FIU is at 65%. o FIU has 28% of its students over age 35, which is the 3 rd highest in the state.

o FIU is 3rd highest in the SUS system for out of state students. o The majority of our non-resident students are international. o Less than half our students graduate with fewer than 132 hours or 110% of the hours required for the typical baccalaureate degree. o We have the 3rd highest Undergraduate enrollments in the SUS. o We have the 5th highest graduate enrollments in the SUS. o We are 2nd highest in bachelor’s degree graduates earning more than the minimum wage in their first year after graduation. o Our bachelor’s degree graduates earn the highest salaries in the SUS in the first year after graduation. o Tuition will continue to increase. o In the last four years, the gap between SUS tuition and the national average has shrunk by only $37.
 John Lombardi created the rankings system for research universities when he was at
U Florida and that system has been adopted by OPPAGA. The ranking system has nine measures. For each of these measures OPPAGA took the highest ranked and the lowest ranked member of the American Association of Universities (AAU) and determined on how many measures different universities in the SUS fell between the lowest and highest ranked AAU institutions. UF, the only SUS member of the AAU, by definition had all nine of its measures within the AAU ranks. FSU also had nine. USF had eight and UCF and FIU had three. For FIU the three were: Total research expenditure, number of faculty with awards, and SAT scores of incoming students.

The transition to Panthersoft for human resources has gone very well. The Provost expects all faculty to be paid the correct amounts on the first pay period of the new system. The only known glitch is that faculty who taught over winter break will not get paid until the pay period after this upcoming one. b.
Division of Information Technology – Robert Grillo, Vice President
Please see Appendix A for a report provided by Robert Grillo.

We have moved from a more transactional model, SAS, to a more people friendly model with clear paths to enrollment. Students will encounter a better advisor experience. Faculty and staff will experience better HR and payroll systems with 1 log-on required for all.

We will develop mobile apps for students to check financials and self-service functions.

We will develop more virtual labs that students can access from anywhere.
 The tech fees have helped a lot.
 We have experienced a few breaches in security in the past 6 months.
 We are working to come up with a tool to encrypt hard drives so the data will be secure in case a computer that has sensitive data gets lost or stolen.
 We will be providing to one common platform without disrupting semesters or faculty educational opportunities.
 There will be no help with Moodle. We will be moving to a different learning platform.


Remark: Moving courses to new systems wastes faculty time.
 Multi-term prerequisites are checked and flagged- right now the student is not dropped if they fail the prerequisite course (especially true in Math and Physics.) c.
Report on the Writing Initiative – Irma Becerra-Fernandez and James Sutton, Co-Chairs
Please refer to Appendix B for a full report.
 Our students are writing fewer and fewer drafts of papers.
 This year the English department wrote a critical investment proposal resulting in 3 hires of non-tenure track instructors to be placed within the colleges of Business,
Education and Engineering. Two more such hires are expected in the Fall: 0ne in
Hospitality Management and Journalism; and the other in CARTA.
 Writing responsibilities must be owned by all, not just the English Department. We want to see more courses infused with writing requirements. We are currently developing courses aimed at “Writing Across the Curricula.” We want to identify at least 2 writing intensive courses in each major: one for juniors and one for seniors.

Comment: Writing assignments often become a function of class size. Someone needs to read those papers.

Question: What are the current caps on ENG 1101 and 1102? Sutton response: 1101
-27 and 30 for 1102, ideally we are aiming to reduce that to 22-24. We have hired about 20 new instructors over the past 4-5 years, and in the coming 3-4 years, expect to hire about 10 more. English currently has 40 adjuncts and TA’s. The adjuncts are closely monitored and the program is carefully structured. d.
FIU Faculty & Staff Campaign- Steve Fain, Chair announced the Capital Campaign will officially be launched February 15 th . e.
UFF Report- Kathleen Wilson, UFF-FIU President announced that UFF membership is currently at 52%. We are trying to increase that to 60-65%. She asked that we check the weekly UFF newsletter for weekly updates on political strategies and activities. The
Gender Survey will be coming out and everyone is encouraged to complete it.
VI.
Unfinished Business (none)
VII.
New Business (none)
Announcements
The next Faculty Senate meeting is on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 1:00pm in the Wertheim Conservatory.
All are invited.
Go to facultysenate.fiu.edu
for regularly updated information on the Faculty Senate.

A
PPENDIX
A
D
IVISION OF
I
NFORMATION
T
ECHNOLOGY
U
PDATE
FACULTY SENATE REPORT
J
ANUARY
17 TH , 2012
I.
Administrative Software Unit (PantherSoft)
The Administrative Software unit manages the University’s core enterprise-wide applications. Its mission is to facilitate FIU’s mission by improving the University's administrative functions and business processes through the implementation of campus solutions, financial management, contracts & grants, human resources, and payroll systems. Based on this platform, the unit continues to roll-out initiatives to improve
University business processes, including:
A.
The PantherSoft Campus Solutions Team has completed Phase 1 of the ‘Graduation
Success’ project. The new MyMajor.fiu.edu was rolled out in October 2011. In addition, program descriptions, admission requirements, job outlooks and contact information were posted on the website to provide students with a clear understanding of each major and the requirements needed in order to successfully complete each program. Additional functionalities will be added in future phases to support students’ progress toward their degree completion through ‘My eAdvisor’.
B.
The Panther Degree Audit system has been deployed to all degree-seeking students at
FIU during summer 2011. Students and advisors are using an integrated student system for enrollment and advisement.
C.
The PantherSoft Human Resources and Payroll system went live December 24 th ,
2011. The modules for Human Resources, Payroll, Benefits, Time & Labor, employee self-service, manager self-service, my.fiu.edu employee portal, recruiting, and faculty events are available. The project team provided training to FIU HR office members and HR liaisons. Online training is available at panthersoft.fiu.edu/hr. Open labs, which provide assistance to users, are also available.
D.
The FIU Mobile Team has been at the forefront in the deployment of FIU Mobile
(m.fiu.edu) for Apple, Android, and Blackberry. Faculty, staff and students, as well as anyone associated with FIU, are able to download the application or utilize the smartphone browsers on their phone for free and have direct access to their MyFIU student and faculty information. Other services include course offerings, financial aid, grades, and enrollment for each semester.
E.
The Campus Solutions Team is in the final stages of assisting Enrollment Services with the selection of a vendor that will provide online transcripts to FIU students and alumni. The project will enhance the way students and alumni request transcripts by sending all transcripts in a secure document for better tracking and ultimately, reduce manual processing of requests within the Registrar’s Office.
F.
The Campus Solutions Team, in collaboration with Student Financials, Financial Aid and Business Services has completed the project to provide students with the option to pay for University Meal Plans with Financial Aid disbursements.

II.
Information Technology Security
A.
The FIU IT Security Office has been very busy over the last 12 months. Security breaches and exposures have raised awareness and concern for all areas. The last two security breach notified 19,573 and 2,570 individuals of possibly having their information accessed. Due to this concern, the Division has been working diligently to determine which added security layers for end user workstations and the campus network would benefit the University community. These solutions will support encrypting data and assist in retaining sensitive data on campus. The Security Office will be developing online training material for all faculty and staff to increase education and awareness. These solutions and trainings will become part of the enterprise wide architecture to secure our teaching, learning, and research environments.
III.
Operations
A.
The Division is in the planning stages with Facilities Management to build a new data center by 2014, which will meet the growing needs of High Performance Computing,
Instructional Video technology, Research, Academic Health Center and other departments on campus. This new data center will be much more efficient in terms of power and cooling, which in turn will create energy savings for the University.
IV.
Network Engineering and Telecommunications
A.
During the fall 2011 semester the Network Engineering and Telecommunications
Department removed FIUAir and one-click guest access, replacing them with three wireless networks: FIUSECURE, FIUVISITOR, and FIU Login Information.
FIUSECURE is an encrypted, secure network available to faculty, staff and students with a MyAccounts username and password. Wireless network access is also available to visitors via the FIUVISITOR wireless network, an encrypted network that is accessible by creating a guest ID and password. FIU_Login_Information, directs users to the appropriate network and provides information on how to log on to either
FIUSECURE or FIUVISITOR.
B.
The team continues to conduct disaster recovery tests throughout the year. The tests verified failover and remote functionality for major IT systems, this includes:
PantherSoft (Financials, Enterprise Portal, Campus Solutions, and Human
Resources), MyAccounts system, and SharePoint.
V.
Media and Technology Support
A.
A classroom response system for FIU faculty, staff, and students has been standardized.
The subcommittee has recommended iClicker. The group has begun to install devices throughout the campus and receivers will be fully installed in all general classrooms by summer 2012. Space and Scheduling will be working with the Media group to update devices available in the classrooms. If you wish to contact someone for additional information please call the faculty resource center at 305-348-2814.

A
PPENDIX
B
Writing Initiative Update
Recall this initiative has three components: first, a “writing in the disciplines” (WID) initiative; second, a study of writing standards in the second year “Writing with Humanities” courses; and third, the collection and publication of resources and tools available to the University community
(students, faculty and staff) relating to excellent writing. The task-force consists of the following members: Irma Becerra-Fernandez, James M. Sutton, Leslie Richardson, Michelle James, Paula
Gillespie, Gisela Casines, Nicol Rae, Kimberly Harrison, Norman Munroe, Cliff Perry, Douglas
L. Robertson, Adriana McEachern, Charmaine DeFrancesco, Laura Probst, Consuella Askew,
Thomas Breslin, Adam Drisin, John Stuart, and Allan Richards.
1- 3 Instructors Hired with one course release each to serve as pedagogical consultants to faculty in other disciplines:

Jennifer Bartman (assigned to College of Education)

Larissa Ramos (assigned to College of Business, but has also reached out to Department of
Economics)

Karl Klint (as Karl is new to FIU, we wanted to give him time to adjust to the institutional context; currently writing instructor Jeff Wehr has the course release to allow him to work with
College of Engineering; he has also reached out to Department of Architecture.)
2 - Writing in the Disciplines (WID)
This effort was led by Kim Harrison. Launched the Writing Initiative with a seminar for faculty in the different disciplines on 16 September. For the seminar we invited our writing consultant
Dr. Mike Palmquist, Associate Vice Provost for Learning and Teaching, Professor of English, and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Colorado State University. Palmquist is widely published in the field of writing studies, and he is the founding editor of
Academic.Writing
, a refereed journal focusing on interdisciplinary perspectives on communication across the curriculum, and editor of the influential WAC Clearinghouse . The seminar was attended by 42 faculty.
At the seminar faculty learned about the following:
 origins of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC),
 elements of effective WAC programs at other research universities,
 effective writing assignment design, and
 methods for improving student critical thinking through writing.
They participated in hands-on sessions to help them plan how and where to incorporate additional writing activities into their classes and to design effective assignments. Writing program faculty assisted the consultant in working with WID faculty in the hands-on sessions. Participants were also provided with two books containing practical tips and strategies for teaching writing in the disciplines.
3- Writing in the Humanities (WIH)
This effort was led by Kim Harrison. Held a second seminar in support of Writing in the
Humanities on 27 October, led by the consultant Dr. Palmquist. Thirty faculty members attended, and they learned about the following:

 key issues related to national WAC efforts,
 effective writing assignment design,
 forms of feedback,
 use of rubrics,
 strategies to enhance student critical thinking.
They participated in hands-on sessions in which they refined their goals for assigning writing activities and improved their writing assignments. Writing program faculty assisted the consultant in working with WIH faculty individually and in small groups. Participants were provided with two books to help them improve writing instruction and also a copy of the handbook, The Everyday Writer, that ENC 1101 and 1102 purchase and that can also be a useful resource for them in Gordon Rule courses. (It is, in essence, a grammar and style guide that includes online tutorials in subjects such as citing sources and avoiding plagiarism.) We also rolled out at this workshop a new Moodle shell with resources to help faculty improve their teaching of writing.
4- Technology Component
This effort is being coordinated by Dean Probst and Consuella Askew (Libraries Associate Dean for Public Services). Members of the subcommittee include: Isis Artze-Vega, Consuella Askew,
Irma Becerra-Fernandez, Cynthia Dottin, Paula Gillespie, Kimberly Harrison, Michelle James,
Laura Probst (convener), Leslie Richardson, Joseph Riquelme, Vicenta Shepard. The ultimate goal for this subcommittee is the creation and ongoing maintenance plan for a permanent site to host resources and tools for improving student writing skills. The site is designed to have content for faculty and for students. As part of the planning process, this group identified functionality needed on this site. The immediate task of the group was to set up a temporary site to support the task force and the faculty working in the two pilot projects (WID and WIH). The subcommittee accomplished the following:

Launched a Moodle shell as a collaboration site for WID and WIH faculty

The site went live on time for the second workshop

The Moodle site includes the preliminary resource list for faculty and students.

In a related project, a group of librarians is working on a series of online modules on identifying and using information resources that will be available for use in fall 2012.
4- Writing Fellows Effort from Paula Gillespie with the Writing Fellows
This effort was led by Dr. Paula Gillespie. At both workshops, Dr. Gillespie discussed the fellows program. In the spring, 55 fellows will be placed in classes in philosophy, religious studies, interdisciplinary studies (taught by Ken Johnson), and in senior design seminars in
Architecture. Currently, three training courses for fellows are scheduled for the spring term. The search for a Writing Fellows coordinator continues.
5- Next steps

Consultants in Business and Engineering continue to develop online material to assist both professors and students. For example, for faculty, they are collecting (and in some cases

designing) useful rubrics and assignment materials. For students, they are collecting model assignments and professional style guides.

Consultants continue to work with faculty to review writing assignments and grading criteria and to add more writing into their courses.

Consultants have reached out to faculty beyond their initial assignment, offering assistance to


 both economics and architecture, and will continue to do so.
Continue to build the Moodle shell and encourage faculty participation in discussion boards.
Collect “starting point” syllabi and assignment sheets for assessment purposes.
WID Faculty were invited for a lunch meeting in December and will be invited again in January
20 th (at CAT) to thank them for their participation, to receive feedback on the consultant service, and to plan for continuing their WID efforts.

Met with task force on Nov 29 to review and plan. Some of the items at this meeting are to be discussed with Deans at DAC.

Host two additional spring events on Friday February 17 th and March 23 rd , coordinated with the
Writing Program, the Center for Advancement in Teaching, and the Center for Excellence in
Writing. Tentatively planned are a faculty panel that will showcase ideas for writing
 assignments across the disciplines and a lunch, sponsored by Bedford publishing, that will introduce faculty to the resources related to the Everyday Writer handbook.
Invite consultant for a return visit (spring 2012).
6- Plan for next year

Continue outreach to selected WID schools and programs through the consultant service.

Increase consultant service to other schools/departments if there is a need and ability to hire additional instructors.

Promote Moodle shell beyond initial WID/WIH faculty.

Site visits to nationally recognized WAC/WID programs that will inform ongoing development.

Increase attention to assessment, with assistance (perhaps from the Office of Institutional
Research or from an advanced doctoral student in assessment).

Continue to support faculty efforts through meetings and workshops. The Spring workshop should address where we are, what’s working and what’s not working, appropriate metrics to measure ROI

Continue to expand the reach of the initiative to other Colleges and Departments

Promote “Year of Writing Well.”
Moving forward, involvement of the faculty senate and task force (soon to be renamed) are important as we consider oversight of Humanities with Writing courses and the pros/cons of labeling writing courses in majors as writing intensive.
7- Discussion Items with Faculty Senate:

Faculty members have requested to continue to meet once a semester to share best practices.
They also want to continue to involve graduate students in the efforts. We are planning these meetings in collaboration with the Center for Advancement of Teaching.

We have discussed with the Deans the need to continue to reward faculty for participating in professional development activities (WID and WIH). Initially we offered a $500 stipend to WID faculty willing to redesign their courses (syllabus and writing exercises) and $100 stipend to WIH faculty for attending seminar and continuous improvement of their courses. The Deans believe that

further development of this pilot into a full-fledged university-wide initiative should not require further incentive, provided faculty members have the required support.

The vision shared by the Deans is that there should be two courses in each major (one at the junior and one at the senior level) that would be designated as writing intensive (given a W in the university catalog), across all sections. The task force will develop a strategic plan on how to reach this goal.

What is the role of the Faculty Senate in promoting and supporting this writing initiative as it moves forward, given that this is a “journey”? The faculty has to want to participate in this effort – how do we determine who the players are and communicate to them that their work is valued (given faculty are already being asked to do many tasks)? This initiative will only be successful if we have the support of the administration and the faculty. We’ve seen really good will this semester; we need to keep that going.

What is the relationship between the writing initiative and other initiatives at FIU, e.g. service learning, global learning, and the Math initiative? Could we find natural affinities among these initiatives, e.g. global learning and writing, or service learning and writing?